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What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Based on the Danish fairy tale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid tells the story of a beautiful mermaid princess who dreams of becoming human and gives up her voice to find love. Produced by Walt Disney, executive produced by Steven Spielberg and written and directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (who also served as a co-producer), the film features the voices of Jodi Benson, Christopher Daniel Barnes, Pat Carroll, Samuel E. Wright, Jason Marin, Kenneth Mars, Buddy Hackett, and René Auberjonois. The Little Mermaid was released to theaters on November 17, 1989 to largely positive reviews, garnering $84 million at the domestic box office during its initial release, and $211 million in total lifetime gross worldwide. Along with the success of An American Tail and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid is given credit for breathing life back into the art of Disney animated feature films, after Walt focusing in live-action from the 1960s to the early 1970s, and is widely considered to be Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg's crowning achievement. A stage adaptation of the film with a book by Doug Wright and additional songs by Alan Menken and new lyricist Glenn Slater opened in Denver in July 2007 and began performances on Broadway in January 10, 2008. In May 2016, Disney announced that a live-action film adaptation of The Little Mermaid is currently in the works. Plot King Triton and his wife, Queen Athena, rule over the underwater kingdom of Atlantica, which is filled with music and laughter. They have seven young daughters, the youngest of whom is Princess Ariel. The merfolk are shown relaxing in a lagoon above water, and Triton gives Athena a music box. Suddenly, a big pirate ship approaches. Everyone escapes except Athena, who is crushed by the ship when she tries to save the music box. Devastated by Athena's death, Triton bans all the oceanic world going to the surface world, for fears of other merfolk being caught by humans. The film then cuts to ten years later, with a foggy morning out on the open sea. A ship then comes from the fog, filled with sailors singing stories about merfolk. Aboard that ship is a young prince named Eric, his dog Max, and his advisor Grimsby. Grimsby denounces the merfolk as, "nautical nonsense", but one sailor insists them to be real. While distracted by Grimsby, a fish the sailor was holding slips from him and falls into the ocean. The fish breathes a sigh of relief before swimming away from the ship. The opening credits play as the fish crosses the deep ocean, until at last, we see merfolk. The merfolk then make their way through the ocean towards Atlantica, where Triton was holding a concert in his name, performed by his seven daughters and the crab court composer, Sebastian. The concert goes as planned until it is discovered that Ariel is not there, much to his chagrin. In truth, Ariel was out excavating a ship graveyard with her best friend, Flounder the fish. Inside one wreck, she finds a pipe and a fork, which fascinates her curiosity, all the while unaware of a shark watching her and Flounder from outside. The shark bursts into the room Ariel and Flounder are in and gives chase to them, all across the graveyard, until the two manage to get the shark ensnared in an anchor ring. They then make their way to the surface, where their friend, a seagull named Scuttle, lives. Ariel asks Scuttle to tell her what the items she collected are. He, being a simple-minded character, describes the fork as a dinglehopper, an item humans use to style hair; and the pipe as a snarfblat, an object for making music. Upon hearing the word, "music", Ariel is quickly reminded of the concert she missed and makes haste back home. However, Ariel fails to realize she is being watched by two suspicious eels by the names, Flotsam and Jetsam. The two were spies under the employ of Ursula the Sea Witch, a former member of King Triton's court before being banished. Ursula hates Triton with a passion for his atrocities towards her, and constantly schemes of ways to exact revenge. The moment Ariel caught her eye, Ursula commands her cronies to watch her, hoping to use her to get to the king. The film then moves to the royal palace, where Triton and Sebastian are scorning Ariel for missing the concert. But Flounder moves in to defend her, accidentally letting slip the encounter with Scuttle, which quickly angers Triton, but Ariel tries to explain humans not to be all that bad, which angers Triton to the point of tell her that as long as she is living under his ocean, she'll do what he says. This sends Ariel away crying, with Flounder following after. When they've left, Triton asks Sebastian if he was too hard on Ariel, to which Sebastian replies, "definitely not". Sebastian suggests that Ariel needs constant supervision, which gives Triton the idea to send Sebastian to keep an eye on her. Sebastian complies with the King's demands but feels dissatisfied with the idea of, "tagging along some headstrong teenager". However, Sebastian's thoughts are interrupted when he sees Ariel and Flounder swimming off elsewhere, prompting him to follow her. He is led to a hidden grotto where he discovers a variety of human objects gathered together. Ariel, still hurt by her father's words, sings of her collection of human objects, and how she desires to visit the world of humans, despite what her father had to say of them. The mood is quickly broken by Sebastian crashing in, and threatening to reveal Ariel's grotto to the king. Ariel attempts to reason with him, but before anything could be resolved in the conflict, a large object is seen floating overhead blocking moonlight from the grotto roof. Ariel, being ever curious, swims to the surface to figure out what this massive object was. The object proves to be a human ship, shooting fireworks into the night sky. Ariel swims towards the vessel, in spite of Sebastian's protests, and climbs aboard to behold dancing seamen. Ariel learns that the humans aboard are celebrating the birthday of their prince; one creature that catches her eye is Max, the sheepdog who takes a liking to Ariel. But Ariel is left enamored when she sees the dog's master, Prince Eric. Eric is given a large statue of himself as a birthday present, by Grimsby, who sourly proclaims that he hoped it would be a wedding present. Eric protests that he just hadn't found the right girl yet, but insists that when he does it will hit him, like lightning. It was then, that the sounds of thunder echoed in the distance, followed by an ever growing gust of wind. Without warning, a hurricane blows in, sweeping up both ship and crew violently in a volley of wind and water. Ariel is thrown off the vessel but manages to catch sight of the ship being struck by lightning setting the ship on fire. When the ship crashes into a gaggle of rocks, the crew is sent overboard, along with the statue of Eric. Though they all made it to the lifeboats, Eric discovers that Max is still on the burning vessel, and goes off to rescue him. While Eric manages to get Max to safety, he is unable to save himself when he gets blown away by a massive explosion and lands into the ocean below underwater. While she sees this and rushes towards his aid, Ariel rescues Eric and takes him back to shore. Once at the shore, Ariel sings of her desire to join Eric's world, before fleeing at the sounds of Grimsby and Max approaching. While Ariel sings, Eric only manages to catch a glimpse of her before she leaves; but as Grimsby raises him up, Eric vividly remembers a girl who had saved him, and is determined to find her. As Ariel watches them from a nearby rock, Sebastian tells her that the situation must be kept secret from her father, but Ariel doesn't pay attention. With vigor and determination; Ariel makes a bold proclamation that she will be a part of Eric's world. However, what Ariel doesn't realize, is that she's still being watched by Ursula's eels. Ursula is gleeful of the situation and eerily looks to a gaggle of polyps in her lair; all of them, former dreamers who came to her power. She then mutters about Ariel becoming a charming addition to the group. The scene ends there. A few days later, Ariel spends her time daydreaming of Eric, which piques the curiosity of her father, who believes Ariel to be in love with another merman. All the while, Sebastian is a nervous wreck trying to keep the secret from being found out. Ariel then decides that she wants to visit Eric, but Sebastian is having none of that. He attempts to bring her down to earth with a musical number about how the sea is better than the land. Sebastian manages to bring a bunch of fish together to sing along, but as this party is happening, Flounder shows up and manages to slip Ariel away unnoticed. By the time the song ends, Ariel was nowhere to be seen, and Sebastian left alone to grumble about her. Suddenly, the royal herald calls for Sebastian to report to the King about Ariel. Sebastian, afraid that Triton figures out what has happened, accidentally slips the truth during the interrogation, and is forced to tell the King everything. Back at Ariel's grotto, Flounder reveals that he had saved the statue of Eric from the wreck, much to Ariel's delight. However, the pleasantries are interrupted by Triton being led to the grotto by Sebastian. After a short argument, Ariel confronts Triton and tells him that she rescued Eric from drowning to death. In his anger, Triton confronts Ariel and decimates all of her secret grotto treasures and reduces them to a junk pile, leaving Ariel in tears. After Triton leaves, feeling bad over what he did. Ariel begins weeping and tells Sebastian and Flounder to leave her alone to grieve, not allowing them to comfort her. However, unbeknownst to her, Flotsam and Jetsam enter the grotto and sweet talk Ariel into going to Ursula to achieve her dreams of being with Eric. As they leave, Flounder and Sebastian follow after Ariel all the way to Ursula's lair. Ursula comforts Ariel and explains that she can grant Ariel's wish to be human for three days, but she must give Eric the kiss of true love before the sunset on the third day, or she belongs to Ursula. In exchange for legs, though, she must give away her voice. Ariel agrees to these terms and signs the contract, trapping her voice in a necklace Ursula wore, and giving her human legs. Once Ariel has been transformed into a human, Sebastian and Flounder escapes Flotsam and Jetsam's grasps and take her to the surface, where the group meets up with Scuttle on a beach near Eric's castle. Sebastian threatens to tell King Triton about the deal between Ariel made with Ursula, but Ariel manages to convince him to help the group. Scuttle then tells Ariel about how to blend in with humans, and the first step was to dress like them. Scuttle takes a portion of a sail for Ariel to wear, just as Prince Eric arrives at their location. Though Eric doesn't know she's the girl who saved his life, he is willing to bring her to his castle to be taken care of, with Sebastian tagging along in a pocket in Ariel's cloth. Later, inside the palace, while Ariel is taking a bath, Sebastian is sent, through a series of misfortunate events, to the castle kitchen. It's there that Sebastian encounters a fish cooking obsessed chef that attempts to cook him. As this conflict goes on in the kitchen, Ariel meets with Eric and Grimsby in the dining hall for dinner. There, Eric and Grimsby discuss giving Ariel a tour of the kingdom, to which she agrees to. Later that night, Sebastian discusses plans to get Eric to kiss Ariel, though Ariel doesn't listen, being too enamored in the human world's splendors. But down in King Triton's palace, the situation is grim. King Triton has sent several search parties everywhere looking for Ariel and Sebastian but hasn't found a trace of both of them. He is left depressed, blaming himself for their disappearance. The next morning, Ariel and Eric begin their tour of the kingdom, starting with the nearby town. Ariel is enamored by every single thing she sees, whether it is puppets, horses, or dancing. The day passes into the evening when Eric takes Ariel on a lagoon cruise. Sebastian, seeing this as the perfect moment, decides to take matters into his own claws, and plays a song to excite the two into kissing . However, the song is quickly interrupted by Flotsam and Jetsam overturning the boat, successively ruining the mood. Ursula, frustrated with the progress Ariel's making, decides to take matters into her own tentacles and transforms herself into a beautiful young maiden called Vanessa. She then uses Ariel's voice to hypnotize Eric just before he could announce his true feelings to her. And the next morning, Eric and Vanessa are announced to be wed by sunset, leaving poor Ariel heartbroken as the wedding ship departs from a port, leaving her and her friends behind while Vanessa convincingly plays her role as a love-struck woman, clinging constantly to Eric's side, raising no suspicion. While Ariel witnesses the ship sailing off, she begins weeping over Eric's loss. Little does anyone know, Scuttle happens to fly over the wedding ship when he hears Ariel's voice coming from the bride's dressing room. He spies from a porthole, and once Vanessa takes a look at the dressing room's mirror, Ursula's reflection was shown. Realizing Vanessa's true identity, Scuttle flies off to inform Ariel and the group about Vanessa. The group then makes a plan, Ariel and Flounder go after the wedding ship on a barrel, Sebastian goes to tell King Triton of what's happening, while Scuttle goes off to stall the wedding. Scuttle gathers lagoon and sea creatures of all sorts (including bluebirds, flamingos, pelicans, lobsters, starfish, dolphins and seals) to converse on the wedding ship as the wedding is just under way. There is a little warning for Vanessa when the attack begins, and the ship is sent into disarray, giving Ariel the time she needed to get aboard. Moreover, Vanessa is utterly flustered, disoriented and sidelined from being able to do anything. Thanks to the help of Max, Scuttle manages to snap the necklace off Vanessa's neck, shattering it across the deck, returning Ariel's voice back to her, and releasing Eric from the spell. Eric finds Ariel and admits she's the one who saved him, but Vanessa warns Eric to leave Ariel alone, before realizing that her voice was now Ursula's after her shell broke. But before the two could kiss, the sun sets and Ariel turns back into a mermaid. Ursula transforms herself from the Vanessa form back to her true form again, taking Ariel back with her under the sea. It isn't long before Ursula grabs Ariel and runs into Triton and Sebastian, and a conflict occurs. Triton confronts Ursula and demands her to release Ariel, but no avail and Ursula confronts Triton by saying to him that Ariel is her slave. After Triton hears Ariel apologizing to him, he attempts to destroy the contract she signed, binding her to Ursula, but finds that he's unable to do so because it's magically enhanced by being legal. So, to save his daughter Ariel, Triton signs the contract and becomes a polyp, thus losing his crown, trident, and kingdom to Ursula. Ursula steals the crown and trident and becomes queen of the sea, which angers Ariel to the point of attacking her when the sea witch almost destroys her. Meanwhile, Eric takes a rowboat from the wedding ship and speeds off towards the location where Ariel is. He goes underwater and attacks Ursula, who then commands Flotsam and Jetsam to go after him. The witch's eels drag him back underwater so she can blast him. To save Eric, Flounder and Sebastian attack Flotsam and Jetsam. In the midst of the chaos, Ursula attempts to use the trident to destroy Eric, but an angry and furious Ariel confronts and berates Ursula by pulling on her hair, causing her to miss Eric and hit Flotsam and Jetsam instead, reducing them to pieces. Ursula shortly mourns their loss before vengefully turning to the ones responsible. As Ariel hurries to join Eric, the enraged Ursula spouts black ink and begins to enlarge. Ariel attempts to tell Eric to save himself, but he refuses to abandon her, just as Ursula's gigantic form emerges, and leaving Eric and Ariel helpless to her power. But in the midst of her rampage, Ursula creates a whirlpool, raising shipwrecks from the ocean floor. And it is with these shipwrecks that Eric is able to finish off Ursula by ramming its splintered bow into her. As a result just as Ursula prepares to hit Ariel with the trident's blasts, Eric saves Ariel from Ursula by ramming a splintered bowsprit towards the witch's evil aorta and abdomen. Ursula blows up into a scattered mass of organs while Eric falls unconscious on the shore. After Ursula's remains sink to the ocean floor, her curse is removed from the merfolk in her garden, as well as King Triton, and peace is once again restored to the ocean now that Triton regains his crown, trident and kingdom. Back on the surface, Triton decides that he has to let Ariel be free to lead her own life and tells Sebastian that he is going to miss her. He then transforms her once more into a human - this time permanently. Ariel goes to Eric, they finally kiss, and the two are immediately wed shortly after, and at this ceremony after Ariel and Eric are married onboard the wedding ship, Ariel bids her friends and family, including her six older sisters, her father Triton, Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle, goodbye to live her new life in Eric's world. Cast *Jodi Benson as Princess Ariel *Christopher Daniel Barnes as Prince Eric *Pat Carroll as Ursula the Sea Witch **Jodi Benson as Vanessa (Ursula's human disguise) *Samuel E. Wright as Sebastian *Jason Marin as Flounder *Kenneth Mars as King Triton *Buddy Hackett as Scuttle *Ben Wright as Grimsby *Paddi Edwards as Flotsam and Jetsam *Edie McClurg as Carlotta the maid *Kimmy Robertson and Caroline Vasicek as Ariel's Sisters *Will Ryan as the Seahorse Herald *Frank Welker as Max the Sheepdog *René Auberjonois as Chef Louis *John Cleese as the Narrator Production Story development The Little Mermaid was originally planned as part of one of Walt Disney's earliest feature films, a proposed package film featuring vignettes of Hans Christian Andersen's tales. Development started soon after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the late 1930s, but was delayed due to various circumstances. In 1985, Ron Clements became interested in a film adaptation of The Little Mermaid while he was serving as a director on The Great Mouse Detective (1986) alongside John Musker. Clements discovered the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale while browsing through a bookstore. Believing the story provided an "ideal basis" for an animated feature film and keen on creating a film that took place underwater, Clements wrote and presented a two-page treatment of Mermaid to Walt Disney at a "gong show" idea suggestion meeting. Walt passed the project over, because at that time the studio was in development on a sequel to the studio's live-action mermaid comedy Splash (1984) and felt The Little Mermaid would be too similar a project. The next day, however, Walt approved of the idea for possible development, along with Oliver & Company, The Land Before Time and All Dogs Go to Heaven. While in production in the 1980s, the staff found, by chance, original story and visual development work done by Kay Nielsen for Disney's proposed 1930s Andersen feature. Many of the changes made by the staff in the 1930s to Hans Christian Andersen's original story were coincidentally the same as the changes made by Disney writers in the 1980s. That year Clements and Musker expanded the two-page idea into a 20-page rough script, eliminating the role of the mermaid's grandmother and expanding the roles of the Merman King and the Sea Witch. However, the film's plans, along with the ones for All Dogs Go to Heaven, were momentarily shelved as Disney focused its attention on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Oliver & Company and The Land Before Time as more immediate releases. In 1987, songwriter Howard Ashman became involved with the writing and development of Mermaid after he was asked to contribute a song to Oliver & Company. He proposed changing the minor character Clarence, the English-butler crab, to a Jamaican crab and shifting the music style throughout the film to reflect this. At the same time, Walt Disney, Clements, Musker and Ashman revised the story format to make Mermaid a musical with a Broadway-style story structure, with the song sequences serving as the tentpoles of the film. Ashman and composer Alan Menken, both noted for their work as the writers of the successful Off-Broadway stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, teamed up to compose the entire song score. In 1988, with Oliver & Company and The Land Before Time already released, Mermaid and All Dogs Go to Heaven were slated as the next major Disney releases. Animation More money and resources were dedicated to Mermaid than any other Disney animated film in decades. Aside from its main animation facility in Glendale, California, Disney opened a satellite feature animation facility during the production of Mermaid in Lake Buena Vista, Florida (near Orlando, Florida), within Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park at Walt Disney World. Opening in 1989, the Disney-MGM facility's first projects were to produce an entire Roger Rabbit cartoon short, Roller Coaster Rabbit, and to contribute ink and paint support to Mermaid. Another first for recent years was the filming of live actors and actresses for motion reference material for the animators, a practice used frequently for many of the Disney animated features produced under Walt Disney's supervision. Sherri Lynn Stoner, a former member of Los Angeles' Groundlings improvisation comedy group, and Joshua Finkel, a Broadway actor, performed key scenes as Ariel and Eric respectively. Jodi Benson had already been cast as Ariel's voice actor by this time, and her recorded dialogue was used as playback to guide these live-action references. Mermaid's supervising animators included Glen Keane and Mark Henn on Ariel, Duncan Marjoribanks on Sebastian, Andreas Deja on King Triton, and Ruben Aquino on Ursula. Originally, Keane had been asked to work on Ursula, as he had established a reputation for drawing large, powerful figures, such as the bear in The Fox and the Hound (1981) and Professor Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective (1986). Keane, however, was assigned as one of the two lead artists on the petite Ariel and oversaw the "Part of Your World" musical number. He jokingly stated that his wife looks exactly like Ariel "without the fins." The character's body type and personality were based upon that of Alyssa Milano, then starring on TV's Who's the Boss? and the effect of her hair underwater was based on both footage of Sally Ride when she was in space, and scenes of Stoner in a pool for guidance in animating Ariel's swimming. The design of the villainous Ursula the Sea Witch was based upon drag performer Divine. An additional early inspiration before Divine was Joan Collins in her role as Alexis Carrington in the television show Dynasty, due to a suggestion from Howard Ashman, who was a fan of the series. Pat Carroll was not Clements and Musker's first choice to voice Ursula; the original script had been written with Bea Arthur of the Disney-owned TV series The Golden Girls in mind. After Arthur turned the part down, actresses such as Nancy Marchand, Nancy Wilson, Roseanne, Charlotte Rae, and Elaine Stritch were considered for the part. Stritch was eventually cast as Ursula, but clashed with Howard Ashman's style of music production and was replaced by Carroll. Various actors auditioned for additional roles in the film, including Jim Carrey for the role of Prince Eric, and comedians Bill Maher and Michael Richards for the role of Scuttle. The underwater setting required the most special effects animation for a Disney animated feature since Fantasia in 1940. Effects animation supervisor Mark Dindal estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for this film, in addition to the use of other processes such as airbrushing, backlighting, superimposition, and some computer animation. The artistic manpower needed for Mermaid required Disney to farm out most of the underwater bubble effects animation in the film to Pacific Rim Productions, a China-based firm with production facilities in Beijing. An attempt to use Disney's famed multiplane camera for the first time in years for quality "depth" shots failed because the machine was reputedly in dilapidated condition. The multiplane shots were instead photographed at an outside animation camera facility. Music Release Home media Reception Box office Critical reception Accolades Controversy Sequel Live-action adaptation Trivia * The film was originally planned as one of Disney's earliest films. Production started soon after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but was put on hold due to various circumstances. In the 1980s, Walt did had forgotten he had intended to make a Little Mermaid film. Ron Clements thought of the idea independently. While in production in the 1980s, someone found Walt's Mermaid script by chance. Many of his changes to Hans Christian Andersen's original story were coincidentally the same as the changes made by Disney writers in the 1980s. * Glen Keane, the supervising animator for Ariel, jokingly stated on the 100 Greatest Cartoons DVD that Ariel looks exactly like his wife "without the fins." The character's body shape and personality were based upon that of Alyssa Milano, then starring on TV's Who's the Boss?; the effect of her hair underwater was based on footage of Sally Ride when she was in space, and her live-action reference model was Sherri Stoner. * When Scuttle is providing "vocal romantic stimulation" while Eric and Ariel are out at the lagoon, he is actually squawking his own version of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet". * A number of backgrounds used during the "Kiss the Girl" number were recycled from Disney's earlier film The Rescuers. * The dress Carlotta wears is a larger version of the one used by Cinderella from Cinderella. * The Little Mermaid ranks as #51 of the 100 Greatest Cartoons as voted in Great Britain. * Near the start of the film when King Triton is seen riding a dolphin-pulled chariot over an audience of mermaids and mermen, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy can be seen in the audience. * Ursula's design was based off the famous drag queen, Divine. * In the contract Ursula has Ariel sign, if one were to pause as the camera pans down, one could see a Hidden Mickey between a bunch of jumbled letters. * During Scuttle's disruption of the wedding between Eric and Vanessa, The Grand Duke and the King from Cinderella can be seen standing together in the background. * In the scene after Ursula is destroyed, Ariel's pose as she looks longingly at Eric bears resemblance to the famous statue of Andersen's little Mermaid in Copenhagen (sculpted by Edward Eriksen). * In the video game series Kingdom Hearts, Ariel, Thumbelina, Odette, Poppy, Anastasia and Mulan are the only official Disney Princesses featured in the game who are not of the fabled Princesses of Heart. Strangely, Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Anne-Marie from All Dogs Go to Heaven, Marina from The Pebble and the Penguin and Erika from The Prince and the Pauper are featured as Princesses of Heart, while unlike Ariel, are not princesses. * The color that Disney Imagineers created for Ariel's tail was, in fact, created just for the movie and was aptly called "Ariel". * On the main menu (disc 1) of Finding Nemo, one of the things Dory says is, "I'm so excited! I've always wanted to see The Little Mermaid!" * When this film was re-released in theatres in 1998, some of the foreign translations were redubbed. The original dubs were restored when the film was released on DVD. * The first ever Russian dub of this film was made in 2006. Prior to this, one male voice was dubbed on top of the English version. * The final defeat of Ursula is very similar to the climax of Howard Philips Lovecraft's short story, "The Call of Cthulhu". Cthulhu is also a giant human-octopus hybrid (although his overall appearance is closer to that of Davy Jones) who is also vanquished by the prow of a ship being rammed into him. * The original story did not have a happy ending. Hans Christian Andersen himself believed this original ending to be too depressing, and altered it. In his revised version, the Little Mermaid still does not marry the Prince, but is instead offered the opportunity to slay him and return to life as a mermaid. Her refusal to do so is an act of true love, and thus as she turns into seafoam – the manner in which merfolk die – she is reborn as a Sylph (an aerial spirit with an immortal soul devoted to helping children, and who herself will one day enter heaven). * In the Norwegian version, Ursula was voiced by Frøydis Armand and Sebastian was voiced by Helge Jordal. The two actors were married at the time and had one child. * It should be noted that The Little Mermaid is considered to be a transitional film; it was one of the last Disney movies use xerography and the first movie to introduce the CAPS system. * The Little Mermaid is the only Disney film which Howard Ashman was alive to see fully finished. Ashman died during production of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Thumbelina. * The 1998 VHS release of this is the first movie to have a music video during the credits. It depicts Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel, on a beach, and, at the beginning and end of the video, the camera being moved over a live-action ocean. The second and third were Recess: School's Out and Piglet's Big Movie.